Around the House

I was looking at the dishes in the sink on Sunday and thought how pretty they were--and how lucky I am to be able to use them every day, and not just "for good" as my mother used to do. Dirty dishes aren't typically something we enjoy looking at, but I admit I like doing dishes now. With only two people in the house most of the time, and pretty dishes to use, what's not to like? Almost all of my dishes came from secondhand stores or yard sales and flea markets. The fun is in the finding, isn't it? And again later in the using.

The sink of dishes made me think of how much in my house is "recycled." Pretty much everything, when I think about it. I've shown some parts of the house on this blog in the past. Here's a quick tour of parts of two rooms, the kitchen and the living room:


Here is one of the two new furniture items in the house--the dining table and chairs. The other is a couch in the log room. Both are sturdy and destined for years of use. But everything on the table was bought used or gifted to me, except the little poinsettia--that was gift to myself!

In my kitchen, the jelly cupboard in the corner was obtained through a trade of an Aladdin lamp. It's chestnut wood and I used it as a pantry. The drying rack was on the trash heap when an old house was being torn down in Ripley about 30 years ago. The buffet was bought at an auction in Virginia in 1970 for $50. It's leaving soon to go to my son Derek's house--I bought another big cupboard that I sorely need for storage in my kitchen and Derek was supposed to get the buffet in my will. Why not give it to him now so he has more years to enjoy it?

Also in the kitchen, the cast iron wood cookstove we bought in 1975 for $75. It is not hooked up right now, but when we get the big storage cabinet in place, the stove will move and we'll be able to build a new chimney and put it back in use. I used it for quite a few years, but when the bank made us get fire insurance, we had to disconnect it because they didn't like the way we had the stovepipe.

By the front door, the wardrobe in the corner serves as our coat and boot closet. The oak chair is honestly just a catchall, but it's handy for putting on boots.

This cabinet came from an antique mall in Weston, WV that was going out of business. It's not in the best shape, but I love its wavy glass, and it holds a LOT of books. And other odds and ends too. The little green couch is a single-sized hide-a-bed and Hannah's favorite place to sleep when she visits. The quilt pattern pictures are made from different types of wood inlaid to make the pictures, and the red cushion covers were a surprise find in the bottom of a box of junk from an auction.

The big bookshelf was one of the first things we built in this house. I own many books on storytelling, folklore, history, poetry, gardening and so on. I am constantly buying and having to weed out books that aren't being used. They have to earn their keep--even though we've added other bookshelves, I still run out of space regularly.

The sunken section of the living room was inspired by homes built around us when we lived in Virginia. We like the way it allows the heat from the woodstove to be at floor level so the floors stay warmer than they wood if the stove was at the same level as the floors. Larry built the brick surround when Tommy was a baby to keep him from getting burned. The afghans were 25 cents at a yard sale.

The built-in couch is not my favorite--it's hard and a little too narrow. It's been in place since we built the house and I've recovered it, for my sins, many times in those 35 years. I'd like to remove all covers and padding and line it with pine shelving boards, sanded and stained and then add loose cushions so that it's more like a bench--which is what it feels like anyway. That might be a project for this winter. In the lower left corner you can see one of the three baseboard heaters we had to put in to get fire insurance--wood could not be our primary heat source. We only use them if we're going to be away overnight in winter.

That's the quick tour. Ignore the dust and dirt--I've been on the road a lot and behind on cleaning, but it will get done before Christmas, I hope. Too late to do it for Thanksgiving!

Microfiction Monday

He strode to the door. "You'll be sorry one day."

She looked out the kitchen window. A rainbow arced into her garden.

“I doubt it,” she said.

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Microfiction is short-short fiction. In this case, it is fiction of exactly 140 characters, which is the limit on "tweets" (which means comments made using Twitter or similar software). You must count ALL characters, including punctuation and spaces. Whew! It's not so easy and I get cross-eyed counting! But it's an exercise in being able to tell a whole story in so few words. Each word carries significant importance.

If you'd like to participate, go to Susan's blog at www.stonyriver.ie and read more about how to do this. It's fun, I promise!

The Road to New Milton and Back Again

I said, "Stop! That's a cool house. I want to take a picture!"

He said, "There's a sign that says winery. Want to go?"

So we turned onto this one-lane road, seeking a winery that had no name. Here's what we found (besides Dale, the man I wrote about yesterday):

The home of the national marble champion, Ralphie Dillon. This young man lives off the beaten path, but found his way to Pittsburgh to become this year's champion shooter.

Beautiful still waters and crumbling old buildings provided food for thought. Who lived there? Why did they leave?

The road wound around curves, rocks and hills,

by an abandoned one-room schoolhouse,

and picturesque barns,

and more old ruins so hidden in the trees they looked like ghosts of the past.

But some older dwellings, like this one, were still being maintained and loved.

The detailed, tight dovetailing is one reason the cabin has lasted so well and so long,

but unless someone comes along soon to love it, this little place will soon be a memory.

At last, after abut eight ambling miles, we found the winery:

Notice the sign. Saturday and Sunday. We were there on Friday. How sad is that. Cascarelli's, you need to put a sign with your hours at the end of the road. Not nice to potential customers to have them drive 20 minutes or more out of their way to discover your hours.

But on the other hand, we would not have met Dale or had an interesting drive down yet another one-lane road in West Virginia that, like so many others, offered much for reflection. Will we go back? Maybe, although this is definitely off the usual route and not a place we are likely to go for any other reason. But if you'd like to know more about the winery, here's their contact information (note that it says call ahead!):

Cascarelli’s Old Country Wine
John R. Cascarelli
Rt. 3, Box 55A
Salem, WV 26426
304-782-2768
Hours:
Please call ahead.

A Life Well Lived

As I mentioned in yesterday's short post, we took the shorter but longer way home. That's not a contradiction: although shorter in miles, it was longer in time. And made longer by the fact that we stopped to take photos.

At an intersection along Route 18 Larry noticed a sign that said "winery." Really? I knew of no winery in Doddridge County, so of course I wanted to find it. We turned and drove a short distance, and, unsure of where we were going, stopped to ask a gentleman working by the road if there was indeed a winery in the area.

That led to one of the most enjoyable conversations I've had in some time. Dale, at 83 years old, was busy cleaning out a building for a friend so that he could tear it down and use the poles it contained to build a garage for his granddaughter. His house had already attracted my attention and my camera; he told us that the home had belonged to his wife's parents and when it came up for sale, he returned to West Virginia to buy it.

Dale and his wife ran off to Virginia to get married when they were very young, and over the years he'd worked at several different jobs including a steel mill and a maintenance worker, eventually moving to Warren, Ohio where they stayed for 22 years. When they returned to West Virginia he started a new career as a bus driver and drove until he was in his mid-sixties, finally taking an early retirement.

But retirement for Dale didn't mean that he stopped working. He is constantly busy with projects, as attested to when we saw him. He and his wife will be married for 61 years on Monday.

We spent 30 minutes in conversation. Dale told us "You people made my day." He certainly made ours. People like Dale are what make West Virginia what it is: they're not afraid to talk to strangers, always interested in learning something new, and don't flinch at hard work. What a man. It was an honor to meet him.

The winery? After another 20 minutes drove, we found it: closed.It's only open on the weekends. But if not for their sign by the road, we would not have ventured up that road, and we wouldn't have met Dale. So the winery did us a service, altough they missed us as customers.

Home Again

We're home, happy and tired. We took the long way home, stopped to talk to two interesting men and took lots of photos. Our travels took us through back roads and over ridges, along rivers and through tiny communities so far back in the hills I had to wonder where the people who lived there worked. Any town of size would have been quite a drive.

But it was beautiful. I'll have lots of pics to share in the coming days. I'll leave you with two for tonight: